"So, what'll you do?" Lewrie asked, stretching to refill his own glass. "Resign, or wait to be retired?"
"Ask for a court," Cashman told him, brightening a touch. "Get my record cleared… make sure everyone knows for certain it was that fool Ledyard who lost it for us. See, Alan… Maitland and his staff are lookin' for scapegoats, and damned if I'll play 'goat.' Maitland holds a court-martial and blames Beauman for losin' him the battle that cost him the entire campaign, why, he can go back to England smellin' like a bed o' spring roses! The regular Army'll love it, 'cause what can ya expect from Yeomanry, militia volunteers, and amateur officers? Pile up a big, smelly heap o' shit over here, then you hardly notice the reek from over yonder, d'ye see. Then, no one'll take Maitland to task for 'conspirin' with the enemy.' That's what you can deem secret letters with the foe. You could almost call it treason, and that's a hangin' offence, no matter what your rank or titles."
"He'll never allow it," Lewrie said after a long moment to mull it over. "Ya don't think Ledyard Beauman doesn't know about Maitland and L'Ouverture negotiating already? Better for Ledyard, his lawyer will know of it, and how to use it. The Royal Navy's just as eager to cover its arse when someone's mucked it, I know, I've seen it close at hand, Kit. Better for Maitland to explain to Horse Guards that he was grossly outnumbered and swamped by bloody waves of fanatics, then only opened negotiations when he saw he had no chance to win. He saved his army, he saved the civilians on Saint Domingue by wangling a promise that L'Ouverture wouldn't take reprisal on 'em. Remember, Kit, I was at Yorktown, and-"
"Oh, that tale again." Cashman waved it off.
"Lord Cornwallis had had his arse kicked from the Cape Fear to Yorktown, then got himself stuck like a bung in a barrel, countin' on the Fleet t'save him. Did Graves, Hood, or Denby pay for failing him? Christ no, they didn't. Did Cornwallis pay for losin' the last army we'd be able to raise, losin' the war, for losin' the Colonies at one stroke? Hell no to that, too! They still love him. This latest rebellion in Ireland we've heard about, that French landing under General Humbert, they're sending Cornwallis t'sort it out."
"So Maitland won't pay, either?" Cashman said as he squinted at his old friend; rather "squiffily," by then.
"End of his active career, most-like, Kit, and no honours, but he'll flap away as free as a dove, with not a harsh word said to him, you just watch and see," Lewrie prophecied, "and everyone'll say, "What a pity, when just one more regiment, one more battery, just a wee bit more luck and we'd have conquered the place, and we're better off out of there, anyway,' d'ye see? He'll write his memoirs and prove it wasn't a bit of his doing, and nothing'll get in the way of that. So, before you pile up your stink, he'll shed you and Ledyard, disband yer regiment, and then it's 'least said, soonest mended' for everyone."
"Not for me, damn yer eyes," Cashman thundered, "it's my honour, my good name that's dragged in the mud! Without a court it'll always be me who funked it, t'will be me who's whispered about, laughed about! I'll not have it, Alan, if I have to challenge Maitland, too, once I'm a civilian!"
"Oh, don't talk rot, Kit," Lewrie scoffed, half worried now.
"The Beaumans have already begun white-washin' his odour," Kit snapped, repouring from the bottle, which was already deeply drained. "Their newspaper friends, those papers sent to England on the packets. Two, three months more, and I'll be all over the London rags as the one who cut and ran. People in town, already… I'm bein' snubbed. Goin' to the other side of the street when I walk by, gazin' skyward with a 'cut sublime'… out at our camp. Wives and children, widows, come to find what happened to their menfolk, and I…"
In the privacy of Lewrie's great-cabins, the indomitable Christopher Cashman began to snuffle and swipe at his eyes with his shirt sleeves, making Lewrie wince in pain for him, yet avert his eyes so as not to stare too directly and shame him. To see someone unmanned…
"Private soldiers know the truth, they try t'tell their folks, but the way; they still glare at me, Alan, it's so…!" Cashman wept.
Suddenly, he smashed a fist on the desktop, so hard he made the glasses, the bottle, inkwell, and correspondence box jump.
"Damn Beauman! Damn him and his kin, damn all those rich, stuck-up bastards and bitches t'Hell and gone! They'll ruin me to save that useless, Goddamned pinch o' pig shit, take all I have! Take my honour and all I've done before, run me outta Jamaica like an 'untouchable' Hindoo, too low caste t'swamp out a toilet… make me sell up for a pence to the pound and lose ev'ry farthing I've invested here… well, I'll not have it. I'll find a way t'get my own back, if it means that I murder Ledyard, or murder 'em all!"
"Now you're really talking rot, Kit!" Lewrie spat back. "Think with your head, not your pride, for God's sake. Want t'end up hanged? Then where's your honour, or your good name, hey?"
Lewrie tossed back his own glass of champagne, then took assay of the bottle on the desk. Talking fools out of idiocy was dry work; he bent down to extract a second bottle from the wood case and ripped away the lead foil, gave the cork a twist, and opened a replenishment, topping them both up. And tossed Toulon a new "play-pretty."
"Duelin' him's better, remember duelin'?" Lewrie asked once he had taken another deep sip. "What you talked about on Saint Domingue, not two weeks ago? I'll stand as your second, God help me. Let 'em retire the both of you, there's no King's Regulations preventing two former officers from fightin'. You blow great holes in him or slice him to pork chops, there's your revenge. But he'll cry off, I'd bet, and that'll prove he's the liar, and a coward to boot. Then you're able t'sell up, justified. Might not get full price even so, but the buyers'll be gettin' a fair bargain, and not robbin' ya blind."
"He can't deny me, Alan, his brother'll make him, so…"
"So you kill him all legal-like, and take shilling to a pound," Lewrie snapped, nigh exasperated with trying to make sense to a drunk. "A twentieth or tenth of yer worth beats poverty all hollow, old son."
"And the bastard'll be dead," Cashman said, half to himself, as if the end result had just occurred to him; beginning to beam as if he had just discovered the joy of it.
"That's the point… ain't it," Lewrie maliciously grinned.
"Don't know," Cashman said, sighing and reaching for the cresh bottle for a refill, shaking his head like a disappointed tot, denied a "surprise" from town by a thoughtless daddy. "Doesn't seem enough, somehow. Not by half, it don't."
"Well, you could have him raped by a cart horse, first," Lewrie suggested, throwing his hands aloft and sinking back in his chair. "My God, Kit, what is enough? Besides your honour, your good name, reasonable profit from your properties, and public acquittal, that is?"
"I dunno," Christopher said with a semi-drunk shrug. "Pillage his lands, burn his house down… poison his wells and livestock? An end to the whole Beauman line… his sister Lucy, excepted."